My Favourite Place
Explore the Keith Medley Photographic Archive
To see the photographs in more detail double click the image to stop the slide carousel.
LIGHTNIGHT 2021 Welcome to our online exhibition from the Keith Medley Photographic Archive. We have selected 44 images of favourite places to ‘play' in Liverpool and Wirral: the fairground, the beach, sports pitches and music venues. We invite you to contribute with your own memories of some of these places by commenting on our Twitter feed @LJMU_SCA or emailing archives@ljmu.ac.uk. The captions on the images are taken from the registers in the Archive, which list the photographs taken each day. This is all the information we have and we are always interested to learn more if you recognise the places. Full list of images is:
Birkett School Play, July 1971
Bowling Alley, March 1968
Birkett School Leasowe, July 1971
Everton cup final team’s return, May 1968
Cadburys Girls’ Football Team, February 1971
Wirral Archers Tournament, July 1974
Trinity Methodist MR Youth Fair, July 1974
Tate & Lyle pensioners’ outing to Rhyl, May 1968
Bowman’s Garage, Cocktail Party, June 1974
Girls at Tower, waiting, August 1964
The Jay Els at Tower, August 1964
West Cheshire Yachting Regatta, June 1968
Rail Strike Passengers, Seacombe Ferry, June 1968
Tower Grounds, New Brighton, April 1968
Donkey Derby, Wallasey Round Table, May 1969
Holiday Pictures New Brighton, June 1968
Sand on shore, New Brighton, April 1968
Keith Medley was born in South Africa in 1915. After school in the UK, and a period in the merchant navy , he took a photographic apprenticeship in Liverpool. On completing this he moved to London, working for an advertising agency, then subsequently as assistant to Howard Coster, a portrait photographer. His portrait of Howard Coster is in the National Portrait Gallery.
At the start of WW2 he was married to Eileen Deakin who was also trained in photography and later worked with him in running the photographic studio in Wallasey. During WW2 he was in the Marine Aircraft Experimental Establishment in Scotland, and filmed the first bouncing bomb experiments. After the war ended he moved to Wallasey Merseyside, opening a photographic studio in 1949 in partnership with his colleague Bob Bird. This he continued until he retired in 1986, and the archive contains most of the material taken over this time, much of it on glass plate negatives, the later part on 120mm film.
© 2021 by LJMU Special Collections and Archives
Aldham Robarts Library, Maryland Street, Liverpool L1 9ED